What makes a Person? Clues from Neuropsychology and Evolutionary Psychology and

1. What makes a Person?  Clues from Neuropsychology and Evolutionary Psychology and What about the Soul?  Edinburgh - November 16th 2013

2. A Very Timely Event Science Vol. 342 1 November 2013 Editorial Seize the Neuroscience Moment ‘…the European Commission launched a Human Brain Project , and the U.S. government announced its Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies ( BRAIN) project.’ ‘..neuroscience research has progressed at an explosive rate over the past three decades. Never before has the often quoted adage of having learned more about the brain in the past decade than in all of recorded history been more apt.’ Nature 503 - 7 November 2013 Editorial Head Start Europe’s mega-project to simulate the human brain has much to offer neuroscience research-whether or not it delivers on its central promise .

3. Robert Boyle “Viewed his theological interests and his work in natural philosophy as forming a seamless whole and constantly used results from the one to enlighten matters in the other” Macintosh J.T.and Anstey P., 2007

4. TENSION AT THE SEAMS ?

5. “..fundamental changes in our view of the human brain cannot but have profound effects on our view of ourselves and the world” David Hubel ,Scientific American, 1979. • "The idea that man has a disembodied soul is as unnecessary as the old idea that there was a Life Force. This is in head-on contradiction to the religious beliefs of billions of human beings alive today. How will such a radical change be received? "Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994 • “…what is arguably the major cultural question of our times: can the humanistic and even religious view of human nature be reconciled with science?”John Horgan , 2003. • " In the fullness of time educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death."Francis Crick .The New York Times, April 13th 2004. "After the Double Helix: Unravelling the Mysteries of the State of Being"

6. LOCALISING MENTAL PROCESSES EARLY VIEWS Hippocrates 5th century BC - brain and intellect heart and senses Empedocles 5th century BC - heart and mental processes 2000 years of debate between “the brain hypothesis” and “the cardiac hypothesis” Galen 2nd century AD - supported “the brain hypothesis”

7. Shakespeare (entertains all the current options) Portia in The Merchant of Venice ( Act 3 Scene 2) Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head

8. Holofernes in Love’s Labour Lost (Act 4, scene 2) This is a gift that I have,simple,simple,a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms , figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, emotions, revolutions. These are begotten in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of the pia mater,and delivered from the mellowing of the occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

9. Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV , part 2 ( Act 4, Scene 2) Falstaff This apoplexy is , as I take it, a kind of lethargy , an’t please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood,a whoreson tripling Chief Justice What tell me of it? Be it as it is Falstaff It hath it original from much grief , from studyandperturbation of the brain. I have read the causes of its effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness

10. Bottom –Up Approaches Accidental Brain damage Animal models Single cell recording

11. Top-Down Approaches

12. O’Craven and Kanwisher Next slide shows activity when faces or houses are seen or imagined.

13. % signal change in Fusiform Face Area % signal change in Parahippocampal Place Area

14. Telling whether someone is imagining faces or places: raw fMRI signal 1 subject

15. “Change the mind and you change the brain” : effects of cognitive –behaviour therapy on the neural correlates of spider phobia Vincent Paquette et al.,NeuroImage,18 (2003) 401-409

18. 2009 Study of Taxi Drivers Evidence for Plasticity And Use it or Lose it

19. Positive outcomes

20. 12 8 % distance error 4 0 full-time drivers retired drivers Use it or loose it! • Full-time taxi drivers (nZ10) had greater grey matter volume in the posterior hippocampus than retired taxi drivers (nZ9; voxel of peak difference shown in yellow), while the retired taxi drivers had greater grey matter volume in this region than the retired control participants (nZ10; voxel of peak difference shown in red). Data are shown at a threshold of p!0.05 corrected for the volume of the hippocampus. Review. Navigation expertise K. Woollett et al. 1413 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2009)

21. ISSUES • How shall we think about mind-brain relations? • What about the ‘spiritual’ dimension to life?

22. "The distinction between diseases of "brain"and "mind", between "neurological" problems and "psychological” or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind.” • Antonio Damasio , Descartes Error,1994. • We should talk of psychiatric illness or disorders rather than of mental illnesses, and if we do continue to refer to ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ illnesses, we should preface both with ‘so-called’, to remind ourselves and our audience that these are archaic and deeply misleading terms. • R. Kendell, B.J.Psychiatry. June 2001

23. Theories which depict experience and its neural basis as inseparable aspects of a single process may hold out the greatest promise. But we do not have any clear understanding of how a single process could have two such different aspects. Making sense of their relationship may require us to rethink the nature of matter, mind, or both. Adam Zeman , Consciousness, a user's guide, Yale University Press 2002 p.341.

24. We may regard mental activity and correlated brain activity as inner and outer aspects of one complex set of events that together constitute conscious human agency. • Interdependence characterised by an irreducible intrinsic duality without dualism of substance.

25. “ ..I believe …an understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind …will require a change at least as radical as relativity theory , the introduction of electromagnetic fields into physics-or the original scientific revolution itself..” Science and the Mind – Body Problem Thomas Nagel 2006

26. A New trend - “Neurotheology”

29. The Elusive God-Spot The temporal lobe is considered "the God module”, the part of the brain that connects with the transcendent. Willoughby Britton, 2004 Hypereligiosity may stem from increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain... my theory is that the medial prefrontal cortex plays the role of the conductor of an orchestra in religiosity" Osamu Muramoto, 2004

31. But what about the Soul?

32. “ The theologians of the early church began to use ideas from Greek philosophy, and the conception of immaterial and immortal soul found its way into Christian thinking and has tended to stay there ever since.” Leslie Stevenson , Ten Theories of Human Nature, 4th Edition ,2004

33. “the question of how the transcendental soul acted upon the physical body became replaced by the question of how the immaterial mind could arise out of fleshly matter. It still remains a central question for the science of mind”. Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie, 2000

34. The Soul and its faculties It would be foolish to seek a definition of “soul” from the philosophers, of them hardly one, except Plato, has rightly affirmed its immortal substance……. Indeed from Scripture we have already taught that the soul is an incorporeal substance….” John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion. Book 1 chapter XV section 6

35. "The idea that man has a disembodied soul is as unnecessary as the old idea that there was a Life Force. This is in head-on contradiction to the religious beliefs of billions of human beings alive today. How will such a radical change be received? "Francis Crick, The AstonishingHypothesis, 1994

36. "from a neuroscientific perspective, it is now unnecessary to postulate a second, metaphysical entity, such as a soul or spirit, to account for human capacities and distinctives. Joel Green, 2004 • "if the immortality of the soul and, hence, dualism are essential to Christian thought, then the church should be bracing for an encounter with science far overshadowing debates about creation and evolution." Lawson Stone, 2004

37. N.T.Wright (2000) Should we continue, then, to speak of 'souls' at all? I see no problem with the word in principle (as Lewis Carroll suggested, you can use words however you like as long as you pay them extra on Thursdays); you can say 'soul', as long as you are committed to meaning by that ‘a whole human being living in the presence of God’ Soul-language, within a Christian context, is a shorthand for telling a story of that sort, a story about the way in which human beings as wholes are irreducibly open to God. It is not, within Christian theology, a shorthand for a story in which a partitioned human being has a soul in one compartment, a body in another, and quite possibly all sorts of other bits and pieces equally divided up. We can then continue to use the word ‘soul’ with fully Christian meaning; but we should be careful, because the language has had a chequered history, and may betray us.

38. EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

39. Evolutionary psychology refers to the study of the evolution of behaviour and of the mind using principles of natural selection. The presumption is that natural selection has favoured genes that designed both behavioural tendencies and information processing systems that solved problems faced by our ancestors, thus contributing to their survival and the spread of their genes.

40. "From the beginning philosophers have agonised over the • question of what makes a human, is there a difference in kind • or merely a difference in degree between ourselves and other • animals? Direct comparisons between people and animals • are often seen as demeaning, even offensive” • Frans de Waal,1996 "It is dangerous to show a man too clearly how much he resembles the beast, without at the same time showing him his greatness, it is also dangerous to allow him too clear vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both.” Blaise Pascal, 17th century

43. Even if animals other than ourselves act in ways tantamount to moral behaviour, their behaviour does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we engage in. It is hard to believe that animals weigh their own interests against the rights of others, that they develop a vision of the greater good of society, or that they feel lifelong guilt about something they should not have done' (de Waal,1996)

44. Evolutionary Psychology and Human Uniqueness The trap of unthinking reductionism 1. Because two behaviors are similar, the mechanisms underlying them are necessarily similar or identical. 2. “Even if animals other than ourselves act in ways tantamount to moral behavior, their behavior does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we engage in. (de Waal) 3. “To communicate intentions and feelings is one thing; to clarify what is right, and why, and what is wrong, and why, is quite something else. Animals are no moral philosophers.” (de Waal) 4. “The fact that the human moral sense goes so far back in evolutionary history that other species show signs of it, plants morality firmly near the center of our much-maligned nature.”(de Waal) 5. The repeated take-home message : There is nothing remotely scientific about oversimplifying complex scientific issues in the interests of an ideological agenda. Unthinking reductionism can at times be a lazy response to avoid facing up to challenging scientific problems.

45. Lessons here for us all. 1. Avoid make sweeping statements about similarities between animals and humans that are not only misleading but simply untrue. There are important issues here concerning the benefits for medical advances using animal subjects . Both similarities and differences are important in properly interpreting research findings. For example , a 2006 report of a working group of the Academy of Medical Sciences in Britain, “On the Use of Nonhuman Primates in Research.” Notes that: “Primates, both human and non-human, embody a major evolutionary step-change in vertebrate brain architecture with the massive expansion of the neocortex. . . . Only the non-human primate brain has a cellular composition of divisions that is in any way directly analogous to that found in humans.” “A recent review of the evolution of intelligence places more emphasis on the continuity of humans with other primates: ‘The outstanding intelligence of humans appears to result from a combination and enhancement of properties found in non-human primates, such as theory of mind, imitation and language, rather than from “unique” properties.’”

46. 2. As evolutionary psychologists we must be prepared to be agnostic or silent on metaphysical issues, and as Christians we should try to rid ourselves of the fear of naturalistic explanations of treasured aspects of our behavior. Both perspectives—the evolutionary psychological and that of Christian ethics—should keep their focus on the common ground between them without slipping into the error of inappropriately mixing their languages.

47. 3. Searching for ‘unique ‘ properties to underpin a belief in human distinctiveness thought to be necessary to help define ‘the Imago dei’ is to misunderstand what it means to be made in the image of God.

48. Humankind and The Imago Dei

49. The imago Dei as the capacity for moral behaviour and • moral agency. • ... herein does very much consist that image of God wherein • he made man ...viz. in those faculties and principles of nature, • whereby he is capable of moral agency. • Jonathan Edwards • "Aiding others at the cost or risk to oneself is widespread in • the animal kingdom" • Frans de Waal • The fact that the human moral sense goes so far back in • evolutionary history that other species show signs of it, • plants morality firmly near the centre of our much maligned • nature.’ • (de Waal,1996)

50. The imago Dei as the capacity to reason 111. The Knowledge of God according to the Church 36. “God…can be known…by the natural light of reason”. “Man has this capacity because he is created ‘in the image of God’”. From a Catechism of the Catholic Church For Descartes" the human mind, by virtue of its rationality, provides evidence both ofa kind ofimage of Godand at the same time a criterion of radical discontinuity from the rest of creation. The animals are merely machines, and it is said that some of the enlightened believe that their cries of pain were no more than the squeaks of unlubricated machinery.” (Colin Gunton,The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. 2nd.ed. 1997) page 101